Walt Whitman is a genius.

This has nothing to do with Nicaragua, but Trevor recently sent me the Complete Poems of Walt Whitman in the mail, and perhaps it has to do with certain events in my life right now, but he just seems so dead on. Here's a poem I found in the Inscriptions to the final edition:

To the States
To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States,
Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth,
ever afterward resumes its liberty.

Very accurate, I feel, concerning the current US political climate. But what is even more obvious than his apparent gift for prognostication is that Whitman truly loved America. It's so obvious in every poem that he thought the United States was building something new, and amazing, and wondrous. He saw a hope for true equality, for a nation truly constructed by the people, and capable of not only accomodating all of them, but rejoicing in their differences and commonalities. From the preface of the 1855 original edition:

Other states indicate themselves in their deputies....but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors...but always most in the common people.

And finally, also from the 1855 preface... I just love this passage. It's beautiful, but also encapsulates a worldview that I think I could truly believe in.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults you own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.